Japanese GP - Round 12 - MotoGP
Motegi - Friday 16th September 2005 - Free Practice

First day of practice for Camel Honda in Japan

Alex Barros and Tohru Ukawa, substitute for the unfortunate Troy Bayliss in the
Japanese GP, both made the most of the first day of practice at Motegi, the
former focusing on set-up and tyre choice in particular, whilst the latter
quickly slipped back into the rhythm of working with his old team (having ridden
for Camel Honda in 2003), and the fast pace required nowadays in MotoGP.

Sito Pons - Camel Honda

"As always on Friday we are focusing on bike set-up and on choosing the tyres. I
think that Alex's rhythm is really good,  and I can see that he's comfortably
amongst the fastest from the beginning of each session and I'm sure he and the
team will manage to fine-tune the settings and pick the right tyre. Tomorrow
afternoon he will be there fighting for a top spot on the grid with the fastest
riders out there. As regards Tohru, we are delighted to have him back on our
bike here in Japan, because he is a really pleasant person to work with, he's
easy-goig and a great professional. He hasn't ridden in MotoGP for two years,
but in just two hours he has already found his rivals' rhythm, and they're in
the twelfth race this year, and he's also working well with the team. We are
lucky that he works with Honda still and he knows this track well, so I hope
that tomorrow he will continue to make progress like today."

Alex Barros - Camel Honda -  1'48.620 -  6th fastest

"This morning we did along test with a rear race tyre and we were quite quick.
In the afternoon we tried a different one, doing the same amount of laps too,
but it didn't go well. If we had used this morning's I would have been quicker
but this was just a test we had to do and meant we could rule out various
options. Tomorrow we will probably work with Michelin and try to set the forks
up better because that's important here, they are worked hard. From this morning
we made some modifications which meant we didn't improve, but we have ideas of
things to test tomorrow after having studied the data we have collected."

Tohru Ukawa - Camel Honda -   1'49.238 -  13th fastest

"I'm delighted to be here with my old team. This morning we started with the
base set-up I use at this track and at the beginning I focused mainly on
improving my feeling with the bike. Lap after lap I'm getting more comfortable
but there isn't enough time and tomorrow we will quickly have to define the
set-up of the bike to get it ready for qualifying."